Your Heart in my Hands
by A Pen and a Piece of Mind
Summary: It's the universe, it's big and vast and mysterious and exactly that ironic. The words should bring them comfort, all they do is make things more complicated. (Soulmate AU)


_Authors note: In my opinion there aren't enough Romanogers soulmate au's so here's my version. This is unbeta'd and probably a hot mess and my first time writing an au like this but here goes nothing._

 **Your Heart in my Hands**

His word, maybe words, he's not really sure what it's supposed to be because they're smudged. They're never clear enough to read, never more than a small blur above his heart. It's appropriate, he thinks. He's sick all the time, of course his words wouldn't be the same as everyone else's.

Bucky tells him he's lucky. Everyone is searching for the source of their words, afraid they'll never find them, but Steve doesn't have that problem. And they both know that there are plenty of people who have never found the one who says the words and they're more than happy.

But still Steve wonders, he imagines and he wonders why he only has a smudge instead of letters.

"Look at it this way, pal, anyone can be your soulmate," Bucky tells him after he helps Steve off the ground from another fight with another bully. "At least you got something to show for it."

And Steve knows Bucky has no words and Steve remembers telling him the same thing a year ago when his smudge first appeared and nothing came for Bucky. Anyone can be their soulmate. It's their choice.

Steve thinks it could be Peggy Carter. She talks to him and he feels a twinge in his chest and his stomach twist in knots. And he wishes he had some damn words to show her.

She doesn't believe in the words, even when she has them, she doesn't subscribe to having to be with the person who said them.

She likes the smudge over his heart. She's the first woman who's ever liked it. Who hasn't been put off by the fact he has no words.

The war goes on, Steve becomes Captain America and he chooses Peggy and he hopes she chooses him.

He misses the opportunity to tell her.

He goes into the ice and the last thing he feels is the smudge start to burn.

Natasha memorizes the word the moment it flares onto her skin, sharp and sure despite the fact it's faded, like it's not really clear on whether it wants to exist. And she wonders if maybe it shouldn't exist, words aren't welcome in the Red Room, but she's young and she imagines. She hopes, maybe they'll let her keep it.

But she knows that the hope is a lie and she spends the night it appears tracing the word over her wrist and repeating it over and over so she'll never forget. It's in English which only serves to make her imagination run more than it did when it appeared. She wonders who the word belongs to, who she could belong to and who could belong to her.

She knows that she belongs to the Red Room, not to the word, not to the person who speaks it and the Red Room doesn't allow competition.

Before she closes her eyes she imagines kind eyes and safe arms to keep her warm.

The next day they cut the word from her skin. They tear and burn and cover it with new skin so it disappears and through the entire process she repeats it like a prayer in her head as she grits her teeth and endures. She keeps the word in her memory, even after each day of training, after each kill and blood soaked hour, she remembers the word.

The word is her safe place when the nights get too long and cold, even if she no longer wears it. She traces where it used to be, repeating what it said in her head, never aloud. No one can know she remembers it or they'd tear it from her mind too.

The word comes back, scrawled and fresh and clearer than when it first appeared and she doesn't know what to think. She's never seen it come back on the others. At first she thinks she imagines it, the two m's the two a's, four letters that she never thought she'd see on her skin again and yet here they are. The next morning she reports to a superior and they repeat the process until her skin is so torn up with new skin grafts and scar tissue and they're satisfied with their work. But she remembers it, faded on her skin, smiling at her in this dark place.

And the word is so damn formal she can't believe that it's hers. It's kind and polite and old fashioned and it shouldn't belong to her.

But it does.

She starts to hate the memory of the word with each mission. Every time she puts a bullet or a knife into someone she hears the word being spoken in her head. She wonders if one day she'll be sent to kill the person the word belongs to, if they'll greet her in that old fashioned sensibility and she'll respond with whatever her word is on their skin and then it'll be over.

She wishes the word would disappear from her mind completely. She wishes she had never seen it in the first place, had never spent those hours when she was a child tracing and memorizing, returning to it over the years when she needed to keep herself going.

She wishes the word wasn't so important to her, that she could shed it like every other identity she's assumed and characteristic she's imitated. But she can't. She can feel it written on her soul even if it's not on her skin. She can feel it pulse in her blood repeating over and over with the kind eyes she used to imagine.

When SHIELD and Clint Barton find her she's tried to bury the word completely. She's almost been successful on it too. But it springs up every once in a while, reminding her that someone out there is destined for her.

She wants to laugh at the sappy idea of destiny. Nothing is predetermined like that, people make choices, they live and they die. She knows that better than anyone. Everything that happens along the way is just chance and circumstance, doing what you have to with what you're given.

Still, she can't look at the empty place on her wrist and not think about it a little bit.

Clint wears his word proudly and he only asks if she has one once. She tells him the truth. She did but she doesn't anymore.

"Did they die?" He asks and she shakes her head.

"They never existed," Natasha responds and love is for children, the word is for children, she's not a child anymore. She's not Natalia anymore. Natalia died in the Red Room, the word etched in her soul, cut from her wrist.

Natasha doesn't have a word. Natasha doesn't believe in her word anymore.

She's on a mission with Clint in Jordan when her wrist starts to itch and burn like it had years before only worse. This time it's stronger and for a moment she's thrown by the feeling of it, but she has a mission. She tries to bury the discomfort as she knocks out the buyer and Clint retrieves the bomb for SHIELD, but the pain never subsides. She stares at her wrist as they board the Quinjet post op but she's too afraid to roll up her sleeve, remove her gloves and Widow's Bites to check. There's no way she'd get a third chance at this. There's no way whoever the Hell this person, this word, is could be this determined.

It aches more as they take off and Clint finishes briefing Coulson only to bounce in next to her, his eyes wide and a smile on his face.

"You're never gonna guess what SHIELD just found, or really who?" He asks and Natasha's wrist burns a lot more than it ever used to.

He answers his question before she can even take a guess and Natasha absently scratches at her wrist when she first hears about Captain America being pulled from icy waters, alive, seventy years after he went in.

Steve wakes to the radio playing a baseball game he went to, the mark above his chest burning far more than it ever did. He wonders for a moment if his word is finally clear, if putting the plane in the water finally made it appear, however the Hell it happened. But there's something off about all of this, he can feel it like the pressure in the air before a storm hits. He blinks to the surroundings around him, uneasiness in his stomach as he scratches at the mark through his t-shirt.

He moves slowly, sitting up as a woman he's never met before enters.

He's running through New York City or what he thinks is New York City. Everything's strange and new and much louder than he remembers. He doesn't know what to think, doesn't know what to do, he doesn't recognize anything anymore. He wants to find Peggy, wants to ask her a thousand questions while they have their dance and wants to know why everything here feels wrong. Surely they weren't away at war that long.

Nick Fury tells him he's been asleep for seventy years and he feels his heart shatter in a million pieces.

He gets angry at the word above his heart. He stares at it in the mirror of an apartment he resents, reading the two letter greeting over and over and he hates it.

All his friends are gone along with everyone and everything he knew. Peggy is gone. And his smudge that he'd grown up with, the smudge he used to get his ass kicked over, the smudge that decides it's going to actually form a word now, is only two letters long.

 _Hi._

What the Hell kind of word is that?

He punches his mirror and then he goes to the gym and punches bag after bag until they break.

Natasha looks at the word again before she takes off for Moscow. It's the same one she remembers. The word that won't stop reminding her there's a life she will never have with someone who won't want her when they find out all the things she's done. She wishes the damn word would just realize it's not welcome and stay the Hell away from her.

 _Ma'am._

She decides she's going to punch the person who says it. If she ever hears them say it. Maybe she never will.

After the Jordan mission she had shown Clint the word, told him it was the third time it decided to rear its ugly head and all he did was laugh. The bastard.

"They're persistent," he had joked, "Hey maybe its Captain America. That shows up the same day he's pulled from the ice…"

"Yeah, right. Captain America and a Russian spy. That'd be perfect."

"Former Russian spy."

"The universe isn't that ironic," Natasha had argued.

"It's the universe, it's big and vast and mysterious and exactly that ironic," Clint said with a shrug and a smirk, "You never know."

She had rolled her eyes and let the conversation fall away on their ride back. Any reappearance of Captain America and her word was purely coincidental. There was no way it was anything more. Not a chance in Hell. There was no use digging into it any further. She'd probably only ever see the Star Spangled Man in passing anyway.

And then Clint is taken by Loki and the Avengers are called into action and she wishes she hadn't been so flippant about all of it, that she had dug into it a little further, much further.

Steve exits the Quinjet with Coulson and there's a familiarity in seeing soldiers go to work. He's surprised at the ease he feels in seeing it all, surprised at how easy it is for him to fall into his old role, to be a soldier once again.

He's all too happy despite the circumstances to lose himself in a fight again.

"Captain, this is Agent Romanoff," Coulson tells him and he turns to see bright red hair and green eyes and he feels the word slow down to a crawl for just a moment before he speaks.

"Ma'am," he greets and he knows it might be a little old fashioned but it's like Coulson had said, the world could use a little old fashioned right now. God knows he could use it. There's a flash of something in Romanoff's eyes that she quickly hides and it's so fast he almost misses it, he should have missed it. Maybe the word was off putting. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to say. He should have just gone with Hello.

But she gives him a nod and returns his greeting with, "Hi," and his chest burns and flares and he can feel the two letter word searing itself on his skin. And he knows what the flash in Romanoff's eyes was, he hopes he can cover it up as quickly as she could but he knows he can't. And he's not sure what to think or what to do.

He found his soulmate.

Her expression remains passive and the conversation goes on and he falls into it easily. It feels much too easy for the way the world has just turned over on him.

He found his soulmate. Now?! He found her now?! He's trying to figure out where he fits in this world, in this time, and his word shows up, his soulmate shows up…he doesn't know what he's supposed to do about any of it.

He does have the worst timing.

Natasha leads Rogers and Banner inside as her wrist finally stops burning and she can breathe. It turns out the universe is exactly as ironic as Clint said it was. When she finds him she's going to hit him for being right, after he's better from whatever Loki's done to him of course.

The Red Room was good for something as it turns out. They taught her to keep a good face, even when her thoughts run rampant, her expression could always hold strong. And oh how her thoughts are running and running.

Steve Rogers.

Captain America.

He was her soulmate.

She takes a look back at him as he glances around, his shoulders high and strong. He watches her a little closer than everything else, try as he might to hide it, and she can't help but smile at it. At him.

She can't allow it. She has a mission, a fight. They won't work. It can't work. She can't have him. Natalia could have. Natasha can't. Ma'am wasn't her word. She doesn't have a word, not in this life.

He's the man out of time and she's got more blood on her hands than anyone. It wouldn't work. Love is for children.

She tries to ignore the fact that Steve's eyes are exactly like the kind one's she used to imagine.

Steve fights Loki and she can't help but think a part of him might have a death wish. He's too reckless, too careless with his movements. She wonders how much of a death wish he actually has. She doesn't blame him for having one. She's pretty sure she has one too, or she did, it fluctuates depending on the week and whatever nightmares have been dredged up.

She doesn't want to notice the similarities or the pain, but she's too damn good at reading people and she's been a lot more curious about the Captain than the others.

He needs better training. She says as much and she has half a mind to drop down and help him out, but Stark arrives and then it's over.

He calls her Ma'am again when Thor arrives and she feels betrayed by the way her heart jumps. They're in an end of the world scenario, with Gods and aliens and magic, and she's reacting like she's in high school where the jock just scored a touchdown and blew her a kiss in the stands.

She watches him drop and tries to ignore the way her stomach flips a little in concern. She shouldn't be this concerned for him. She barely knows him. He barely knows her. They have a fight and a world to save.

She tries to ignore the nagging flutter of her heart and the word etched onto her wrist.

Steve doesn't have much time to dwell on the word on his chest. Not when the memory of those left behind is too fresh, not when he has to focus on the fight ahead. He's still Captain America. He has to lead, follow the mission, and be a good soldier. Falling into old patterns is the only thing he can really do right now.

He's a super soldier, he's got all the strength and the healing and he can survive being frozen in ice. He fights Loki and he doesn't really care if he dies.

He imagines Peggy telling him he's being careless, he's being stupid. And he knows she would be right. But Tony Stark arrives and Loki surrenders. Steve doesn't like how easy it feels, but he's not quite sure whether it's the situation or that he just isn't sure about anything in this time. And then another Asgardian drops onto the Quinjet and takes Loki and Steve doesn't really have time to think about it anymore.

He looks back at Natasha before he jumps after Stark and even though she argues for him to sit this part out, he can't. He's still Captain America, right? He thinks he is. Or he should be. He wonders if she thinks he's being reckless like Peggy would say he is, like Bucky would have said he was being.

He shouldn't really care what Natasha thinks about him right now. He barely knows her, but a part of him feels like he's known her for a while, or someone like her. And it's not the word on his chest, it's something about her, about the way she is.

It didn't take him long to notice how she carries herself. She's precise, reading the room, calculating and he knows she's more spy than soldier, but he also knows she hides a shadow behind her eyes and she hides it well. But he saw plenty of young soldiers with that same look who couldn't hide it at all and he recognizes it in her and in himself.

He shouldn't be looking for similarities right now. Not when he's hurtling to the ground while the trees around him are being shattered in half with a fight.

The Helicarrier comes under attack and Natasha gives Clint a Hell of a headache, but it's more about saving him and less about making him pay for being right about who her soulmate is. He thanks her later after the mind control passes and she's able to talk to her friend again.

She wants to fight. She wants to do something to fix…she's not sure. Maybe it's about proving something to herself, to the word on her wrist that just won't go away. She and Steve haven't spoken about it, there hasn't been time, not really, and she's grateful for it.

She doesn't want to talk about it. She knows she can't. And she knows he won't talk about it, or she hopes he won't. She catches the quick glances here and there, when he thinks she isn't looking.

"You're a spy, you're not a soldier," Clint tells her, "What's changed?"

"I've been compromised," she admits in the only way she really knows how. "I got red in my ledger. I want to wipe it out."

And she wonders, in another life, if she wasn't who she was, if Steve wasn't who he was, would they have found each other, would they have been happy.

Natalia used to imagine the happy life, the life free of blood and pain, but Natasha knows that life is a lie. And even if she does have a soulmate, she's too damaged for them. She's only known him a short while but she knows Steve deserves better than her. He deserves a good life, especially after the Hell he's gone through and everyone he's lost. She'll spend her days making right everything she did wrong, absolving all her sins. Love doesn't factor into that equation.

"I was right, wasn't I?" Clint asks as he notices the darker edge of the last M peeking out from her sleeve. She kills the smile before it can really bloom but Clint smirks in satisfaction, "Yeah. I was right."

They're beaten and bruised on the ground as the Chitauri keep coming. Natasha catches her breath against a car and feels the ache in her bones from the day as she glances over to Steve finishing off another of the Chitauri.

She shouldn't be all that surprised that they fight well together. She and Clint have a rapport that they've built but she and Steve seem to fall into patterns easily without so much as a spare word said to each other.

Steve sees the blood on her lip and the exhaustion in her face and he knows this fight can't go on much longer. She knows it too.

"Captain, none of this is gonna mean a damn thing if we can't close that portal."

"If you want to get up there, you're gonna need a ride." He doesn't mean it as a challenge, but she rises like it is one and he can't help but feel his stomach flip a little at it. He can't get absorbed in that feeling, not when the wounds are still fresh, not when he still remembers Peggy's voice and owes her a dance.

Maybe the Chitauri will kill him before the day ends. No, he can't think like that right now. He has a team that needs him. A city that needs him.

"I got a ride," Natasha says and he knows just what to do, just what she intends to do, without a plan ever really needing to be said. He holds his shield in position and she springs and when he looks up she's flying and dropping onto one of the Chitauri's ships.

He feels his mouth hang open a little at the sight. But then a weapon is fired at him and he's right back in the fight.

They win and everyone goes their separate ways. He's sure he'll see them again. The world always needs saving from something, but he's not sure when.

He's surprised at the comfort he finds in that realization, that maybe in this new life he can have friends.

He learns Peggy is still alive and he starts to visit her every day. On good days she remembers him and on the bad one's she thinks he's a ghost or doesn't know who he is at all. He feels like a shadow, like he doesn't really exist, and he remembers kissing her on an airstrip seventy years ago. Except for him it feels like yesterday.

He doesn't tell her about the word appearing. As far as he's concerned he still has the smudge. There's no one out there for him.

He starts getting missions for SHIELD and he's surprised when Natasha is paired with him. Fury says they work well together, better than most he's seen. Steve isn't sure what to say, whether or not to bring up the word, but Natasha never does, so he doesn't either.

They spar from time to time. Natasha trying to teach him how to be more protective, how to fight without his shield and be less of a soldier marching into the fight, more a brawler there to win.

He picks it up quickly and they fight fast and loose. She takes up calling him nicknames like father time and asking him what it was like when America threw tea into the harbor.

It's a defense mechanism whenever things get a little too personal.

Sometimes he asks her a simple question, like where she grew up, and the only thing she can do is deflect to asking him what it was like meeting Abraham Lincoln.

She lands a solid punch to his face in one sparring session and he just wipes the blood and smiles. They continue on.

"You're putting too much weight on your left side," Natasha tells him as she whips around and lands a kick to the right. "Makes it easy to spot where you'll go next."

"But no one ever knows where you're going," he states and maybe he's a little frustrated. It's been weeks, they've been on missions, and still neither one of them has said anything about the words on their skin.

He starts to wonder if it's her at all. If the hi didn't come from someone else, if he imagined it, but he knows he's just lying to himself. He's never seen the word on her and he's never heard of there only being one word on one half, but he's also the only person who's ever been thawed out of ice, so there's a first for everything.

"Are you trying to compliment me, George Washington?" She's deflecting again and he can sense it as he pulls his punches and stops the sparring. He thinks of all the time he wasted with Peggy and wonders if he had been faster, if he had been a little braver, if maybe they would have had more. They would have had their dance.

But Natasha isn't Peggy and he can't just say we're soulmates and kiss her and let that be the end of things. He's not even sure if he wants to kiss her. He just wants something. A connection, maybe an explanation more than anything. Because if this is what it's like with them, how can they be meant to be together?

"Did it sound like a compliment?"

"Okay. Let's take a break." She backs off, reaching for her water bottle, shoulders high and eyes watching. "Obviously you're American Flag boxers are in a twist about something."

"So we're really not gonna talk about it?"

"About what?" She shrugs and she's so sure that he almost believes she genuinely doesn't know. And it's the moment he thinks he can't really trust her, because if she can lie this easily about this, how could he really know who she is?

But the word Hi is written on his chest and he thinks he should know. He was meant to know.

"Never mind," he tells her and then he's out of the training room and home within the hour. He tries to sleep that night but knows he can't. He never does. So the process of his days repeat. He goes for a run and tries to clear his head.

"You got a soulmate?" Sam asks him after Steve has outrun him and they've gotten to talking about what it's like after a war.

Steve shrugs. "I think so."

"You think? Don't you know?" Sam shows Steve the words written on his forearm with a smile. They haven't darkened yet which means Sam hasn't met them yet, but he's proud of the words on his skin and Steve wonders what it's like to be hopeful and happy about them. He wonders what it's like not being confused or angry about them.

He pulls his shirt aside and shows the dark, "Hi," on his chest.

"So you've met them," Sam says. "Wait were you like at a party and you're not really sure who said it to you, because listen, we can find them. There's this thing called Facebook now…"

"No I know who said it to me."

"Then what's the problem?"

Steve gives Sam a look and he waves his hand, saying, "I mean besides the whole being in the ice thing and being Captain America."

"It's…complicated." Steve shrugs and as if on cue he gets a text message from Natasha and they have a mission.

Sam tells him to listen to Trouble Man and Steve writes it into his notebook of things he needs to catch up on. He tries to ignore the fact that more than half of the suggestions are from Natasha. When she picks him up, calling him a fossil, he forgets the almost argument and tries to bury whatever frustrations he has.

She isn't sure what she wants from Steve. She tells herself she wants nothing. She tells herself that he's got too much crap and so does she. They don't need the words or this weighing on them, but weigh on them they do.

At least, they weigh on her.

He snaps and she deflects and she uses all the skills she's learned to keep him at a distance, or just enough at a distance that they work well together and nothing more.

She knows she's going to have to pick it up if she really wants to solidify their relationship as just work acquaintances, maybe friends, but nothing else.

Still, sometimes she imagines, something she dreams, and the day he asks if they're really not going to talk about it she tries to think of what she should say, where she should begin, and where she should stop listing the reasons they should just forget about the damn words.

It always begins with Hey Steve I know we're soulmates but…

And then it goes into all the people she's killed, the blood she wants to forget, the Red Room. Then she lists his feelings for Peggy, the fact he hasn't really adjusted, the fact that he's way too lost and so is she.

It comes back to the killing thing. She talks about that a lot, as if reminding him about all of it is going to make him run far away as fast as he can.

She kind of hopes he will, that it will be enough to end it before it begins. But she wonders what she would do if he stayed. If he heard all the horrible, terrible things she did in the shadows and stayed to face those demons with her.

But she knows it's a fantasy. It's a shit one, but a fantasy all the same. She's not meant for long term relationships and she's definitely not built for soulmates.

He's made for that. He's made for the wife and the kids and the happy picket fence, even if he doesn't think he can have it. And she knows he thinks that, she knows all his regrets tearing at the seams and she wonders if she could fight his demons too.

He cares too much about everyone and he does it so openly even when he holds himself together, but she's never been allowed to care. The Red Room didn't let her care or mourn or pine. And yeah, she's been out of there for a while now, but it doesn't change the way they taught her to think or feel, not completely.

She starts trying to set him up and he jokes back about the age thing, about being old fashioned and they fall into such an easy rhythm on missions she wonders why they can't just keep it this way when they're not ready to fight a bunch of bad guys. Why it can't be this easy all the time.

He brushes off every idea she has and jumps without a parachute and that old thought of him having a death wish pushes into her brain. She jumps with one, joins him on the Lemurian Star, her own mission from Fury in mind, and they continue the conversation like it never stopped.

He doesn't want to be set up. He doesn't know what he wants. But when she strays from the team, when he has to cover them from a bomb and she's gone solo on her own secret side mission, he gets angry.

She can change so easily. And she's a Hell of a fighter and he respects her work, but he doesn't know what's real, what's beneath the surface she projects to the world.

"My bad," she says.

"You're damn right," he returns, picking himself up and going on.

She doesn't know why she feels so bad about it, but she does, and it's not the fact that she was just thrown half to Hell in an explosion. She feels bad that he's this angry at her. That he doesn't trust her.

She doesn't blame him for not trusting her. But she knows she's done enough to earn it. She fought with him in New York against an alien invasion and he's pissed that she copied a USB drive. It was Fury's orders. It's not like she just decided to do it.

He tells her it's a team, he has to know where they are and they have to rely on each other. She's used to going solo, to doing things her way. She's not a soldier, she's a spy and she's not sure how long it's really going to take him to realize it. Or maybe he does realize it, he's just doing what he's used to.

This is the world now. He needs to understand that wars aren't fought out in the open like they used to be, not all of them.

Fury dies and it's the first time he's seen her cry. It's the first time he really connects with something real. And he knows it isn't for show. He knows it isn't to make others trust her. She cries because she's sad.

He pretends he doesn't notice the tears and he watches as she pulls it together and stalks out of the hospital room like she's on a mission.

He isn't sure what to say. He's still trying to figure out all the spy stuff, but she's hurting and Fury is one of the few people he knows in this life, an authority he can maybe trust.

"Natasha," he calls and she whirls around, almost surprised that he had been following her.

"Why was Fury in your apartment?" She grills, trying to put it together, trying to understand. He just shrugs.

"I don't know."

Rumlow orders him to go to SHIELD, the very place Fury told him not to trust, or told him enough. Natasha just smirks and Steve isn't quite sure if he can tell her the truth, whether or not she's one of the good ones or the liars inside.

"You're a terrible liar."

He hides the USB and goes where he's been ordered to go. And it doesn't matter that the whole idea of soulmates falling together easy is a big lie. All that matters is who did this to Fury and why? Who the Winter Soldier is and what killing Fury accomplishes.

Natasha watches him hide it and she commends his practicality. All in all it's not a bad spot, not completely. It's actually pretty good, so long as no one decides they want some gum.

She hangs around. Waiting for him to come back because whatever he's doing to find Fury's killer, and she knows he's doing something, she wants in. There was a reason Fury was at the apartment, there was a reason the Winter Soldier was there, a reason for all of this and she knows SHIELD is hiding something and she wants to figure it out.

He returns for the USB and she smacks the gum she bought before getting her prize. He shoves her into a room, all of this wearing on him. He just escaped SHIELD, he's not ready for another fight.

"Where is it?"

"Safe. Where did you get it?"

"Why would I tell you?"

He doesn't have to, "Fury gave it to you. Why?"

"What's on it?" And she retrieved it, she has to know what it contains.

"I don't know."

He shoves her a little harder, "Stop lying."

"I only act like I know everything, Rogers."

"Bet you knew Fury hired the pirates."

She's pragmatic and he's emotional and she wonders if this is why they work well, if this is why their words belong to each other. "Well it makes sense, the ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in so do you."

"I'm not gonna ask you again," Steve pushes and she decides it's time for a little honestly, to give him a little of what she knows.

"I know who killed Fury." Steve straightens and backs off a bit and she tells him about the Winter Soldier and the bullet he gave her. She shows him the bullet scar and it's the first time she's told him anything about her life, about any injuries she's ever sustained. She tells him about trying to protect her engineer, about pulling him from the wreckage and he knows, especially after seeing her in New York, she cares a lot more than she lets on. She protects, doing what she has to for the right cause.

"Bye bye bikinis," she states.

"Yeah I bet you look terrible in them now." He backs off and she half smiles at the joke. And she wonders where her word is on him. She wonders what it would be like to see it. To see the proof on his skin just as it's written on hers.

She tries to bury the thought as she reveals the USB. He takes it from her, "Let's find out what the ghost wants."

They're being tracked and he's thrown by how in her element Natasha is. He preps for a fight and she gives him orders and gets them through without so much as one punch being thrown. She tells him to tilt his head and laugh and he does and he's shocked at how easy it works. How no one notices them.

And then he remembers she's used to this, evading and blending in, and he wonders how long she's really been doing it.

She tells him to kiss her and his heart jumps into his throat.

"What?" He asks, forcing out the word from his mouth that's suddenly too dry.

"Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable," she answers matter of fact about all of it.

"Yes they do," his voice rises an octave and he knows they're in danger of being caught, now isn't the time to get shy. She's got them this far, he can't let her down now. So he listens, he leans in and presses his mouth to hers, and if he enjoys it a little bit he never says so.

It's for the mission. It's so they can get out of this place safe and sound. That's what she tells herself and yeah, maybe she enjoys the feel of Steve's lips on hers, maybe she lets herself pretend for a second that they're on a date and not trying to get away from Rumlow and the strike team. Although why they would be on a date at a mall is beyond her, but still, she imagines. She lets herself like this.

It's not perfect, he's definitely rusty, but it works all the same, not that she expected it wouldn't.

She doesn't expect the inferno it lights in her heart. She doesn't expect that she craves more. She doesn't think it'll make her trying to keep Steve Rogers at a distance go from bad to worse in her head, but it does. It makes her a little dizzy and her stomach flips like she's on a rollercoaster but they're just riding an escalator.

She lets herself pretend for a second and then she has to reel it in. She has to go back to being Natasha Romanoff and he has to go back to being Steve Rogers.

She pretends she doesn't hear the stunned and shaky breath he takes after it's over. And she coldly turns away, pretending like it didn't just make her thoughts race more than when the word first flared the second he said it.

"You still uncomfortable?" She asks.

"That's not exactly the word I would use."

"Where did Captain America learn to steal a car?" She asks, her feet propped up on the dash. She was a little surprised at how easily he managed it, how fluid his motions were as he broke in and started the truck.

She half expected to have to be the one to find the ride, but he was on it before she could even voice the idea. He even went inconspicuous right out of the gate. She'd say she was proud but she wasn't the one to teach him that.

"Nazi Germany. And we're borrowing, take your feet off the dash."

She does and she can't help but smile a little at it. Of course he would want to return the vehicle, of course he would care that they leave it in the condition with which they found it.

"Alright I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer…"

His heart jumps a little at that and he wonders if she's going to finally bring it up, if after all the time that's passed since that day on the helicarrier this is the moment of peace where she brings it up.

"I feel like if you don't answer it thought, you're kind of answering it…"

"What?"

"Was that your first kiss since 1945?" She says to him slyly and he deflates a little.

"That bad, huh?" He asks.

"I didn't say that." She wonders if he only knew the thoughts that were passing through her head. The kiss was simple, it was sweet and simple and not that bad at all, but she doesn't get into it more.

"Well it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying."

"I was just wondering how much practice you've had."

"You don't need practice."

"Everyone needs practice…"

"That was not my first kiss since 1945, I'm 95, I'm not dead."

She smiles a little wider, enjoying the back and forth of their conversation, enjoying the scenery passing by them. And in another life maybe they would just be driving, their words out in the open for all to see.

"No one special though?" She asks and again she's trying to push it away, trying to push the thought of him away.

"Believe it or not it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience," he answers and a part of him thinks about her, thinks that they must be soulmates for a reason, right? He sees the shadows in her eyes, he knows that they share something, whether or not she ever brings it up, or he does either.

"Well you just make something up."

"Like you?" He asks and she just shrugs.

"The truth is a matter of circumstance, it's not all things to all people all the time, and neither am I." He hears the honesty in her words and he feels sympathy for her, realizing that maybe she's a lot lonelier than she lets on. She spends more time hiding and changing and maybe he was a lot harder on her for it than he should have been.

"That's a tough way to live," he tells her and he means it.

"It's a good way not to die though."

And he decides he'll let up, maybe he'll tell her what it is. He doesn't really know her, he doesn't really know who she actually is beneath all the layers and the espionage. "You know it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't really know who that someone is." And he wants to trust her, he wants to, but he doesn't have anything real to grasp onto.

"Who do you want me to be?" She asks and she isn't quite sure what he's going to say, what she wants him to say.

"How about a friend?" He asks and he thinks it a good stepping stone, a good jumping off point. He could use a friend. He doesn't need a soulmate, he needs a friend.

She laughs but there's no warmth in it. She didn't have friends in the Red Room. She can count on one hand the friends she has now, the ones still alive at least. And maybe it's another of the many similarities between them, the lack of people to trust, the lack of friends.

"There's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers."

And he wonders if he should ask about the word, about her word, his word. But he never does. He knows he shouldn't and he knows that maybe asking her to be his friend is too much, but they're allies. They're in this together. She's his friend now.

They learn HYDRA has infiltrated SHIELD from the beginning and Natasha feels the shock a lot more than she wants to. SHIELD saved her, they gave her a second chance, a new start, a way to be better than the monster the Red Room made her.

But it was Hydra all along and she doesn't know what to think and she doesn't really have a lot of time to.

The missiles come for them and the last thing she feels before blacking out is Steve's above her, holding his shield against the onslaught of rubble and fire.

He carries her out of the wreckage, his heart hammering in his chest. He can't lose another friend. He can't lose his soulmate, even if they haven't really talked about it, he won't lose another soldier. Not now.

He's relieved when he feels her breathing against his neck as he carries her far away from the base in New Jersey. The truck doesn't survive and he wonders if he can have the rightful owner send him a bill, but he's more focused on Natasha.

He finds another car and settles her in the backseat, hearing her mumble something in Russian as her eyes remain closed.

He tries to find relief in that, in knowing she's alive, but Hydra is inside SHIELD and everything he did feels like it was for nothing.

She wakes up when they're almost back in DC but neither of them have anything to say.

"You saved me," she states and he glances back at her before his eyes return to the road.

"That's what friends do," he tells her and she climbs into the front seat. He tries to ignore the slight groan she makes as she does and he wonders how many times she's had to hide any pain.

They don't talk all the way to Sam's place and Steve is grateful for another friend in this life.

He shifts his tank top over a little to really stare at the word above his heart and, not for the first time, he wonders where the word is on Natasha. He can see her through the door, absentmindedly drying her hair and she's lost in thought, shaken.

He scans each of the two letters with his eyes, taking in the detail and the dark ink carved into his flesh and he still can't understand the reason why it's so difficult. When he was a kid everyone said it was easy, that finding your soulmate was like finding home and no matter what you knew you belonged together.

But he doesn't get that, he doesn't see that. Maybe it's because he doesn't feel like this time, this place is his home, maybe because Peggy is dying in a hospital bed and he missed everything. Or maybe because he doesn't want to see it, he doesn't want to feel it.

He knows something's shifted. He knows he feels something. And a part of it feels like coming back to life, like his soul is finally emerging from the ice, not just his body and his mind.

He doesn't bother to cover the word up as he leaves the bathroom. And he knows Natasha can read it, can see the confirmation on his skin, but he doesn't care anymore about hiding it.

For a moment he sees the word on her wrist, dark and clear. The first word he ever said to her. When she notices him she flips it around, covering it up like it's a secret. He sees the way her eyes glance to her first word on him and she doesn't keep her wrist hidden anymore.

"You okay?" He asks, tossing the towel back into the bathroom.

"Yeah."

He knows she's lying. He can see it in her eyes. And he knows that look well. He knows his look well. They've been torn up by battle, lost in the confusion of not knowing who to trust anymore.

He takes a seat close to her as she keeps drying her hair and he can read Ma'am as clear as day, but it's not about the word, it's not about them being soulmates or whatever the Hell they are. It's about being there for her because he knows her world is just as shattered as his right now, maybe more so.

He heard her name, her real name, her Russian name, and he knows there are things she doesn't talk about, things she woke up from in the car ride here. He can recognize some Russian words and he knows what stop and please sounds like, what quiet whimpering sounds like.

"What's going on?" He asks and he waits, there's no deflection this time, there's just honesty.

She stares into his eyes and she sees the kindness reflected in them. And it's just what she used to imagine, the concern, the care, countering all the darkness. And it's like drawing poison from a wound, the truth and the pain that she can share.

"When I first joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight," she pauses at that, at all the hopes and ideals she put in her new life. She was doing good, she was becoming better. She was more than just a hired gun, but that wasn't really the case. "But I guess I just traded in the KGB for Hydra."

She feels the pain of it really sink in, "I thought I knew whose lies I was telling but…I guess I can't tell the difference anymore."

"There's a chance you might be in the wrong business," Steve returns and she lets out a small breathy laugh at that, but with those words she feels better. He gives her a smile and she looks into his eyes again, too afraid to look a little further down and see her word on his skin. But it's the eyes that really get her, not the mark, it's the safe place she used to go to in her imagination and the reminder of how much her own mark got her through.

He saved her life, she reminds herself, "I owe you," she says and she knows she needs to pay him back. She owes him a lot more than just this one save.

He shakes his head, she doesn't owe him anything. It was the right thing to do. He wouldn't leave anyone behind, he couldn't. She should know that. "It's okay," he tells her, hoping it's enough. There's nothing to owe.

"If it was the other way around and it was down to me to save your life, and you be honest with me, would you trust me to do it?"

She's searching for any doubt for any fear and finds none. And he knows he has no doubts left, not after everything they've been through. Not with the marks between them.

"I would now," he says assuredly, "And I'm always honest."

It feels like a weight disappearing not just between them but from her and she feels like the Grinch when his heart grew three sizes. Not that she hates Christmas or anything of the sort, she's just a lot warmer than she thought she would be at a time like this. And she wonders if maybe she couldn't really hurt him any more than he's been hurt. That maybe the universe was getting something right, that all the pain might be worth it.

But then she remembers who she is and even as she's about to bring the words up, she finds she can't.

"You seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out he died for nothing."

He leans back, comfortable, almost relieved, "Well, guess I just like to know who I'm fighting."

She doesn't say it aloud but she agrees. He can make out the damaged skin where her word is but he's careful not to ask and she's grateful not to have to have that conversation too.

Sam tells them he made breakfast and as they go to the kitchen he's quick to see the dark words that match on Steve and Natasha.

He gives Steve a look, "That's…"

"Complicated," Steve answers.

He finds out Bucky is not only alive, but the Winter Soldier and he knows he needs to save his oldest friend. Maria Hill rescues them and Sam straightens when she removes the helmet and says this thing is squeezing my head.

And Steve recognizes the flash in Sam's eyes, knows what it feels like for the words to burn and flare across skin.

They find out Fury is alive the same day and Natasha is bleeding and shot and Steve doesn't know how the plan to take down Hydra is going to work out because there are just too many things to think about.

Sam and Maria manage to have some sort of conversation that borders on much too flirty and Steve is once again taken aback at how easy it is for everyone but him and Natasha. Tony and Pepper. Now Sam and Maria. He wonders how many more people he needs to see fall in love before he starts to get angry at it.

Whether or not Natasha sees it too he isn't sure, she's too busy bleeding and she feels heavier than she should, faint. He doesn't worry about anyone else but her in the moment, ready to pick her up if he needs to.

He knows there are good people still at SHIELD. He knows he can save Bucky, but first he needs to help Natasha.

He's not surprised that she gets patched up in front of Fury so she can hear whatever conversation is about to go on and he wonders how anyone can have the focus she does through that pain.

He finds out when he fights Bucky and he takes blow after blow from his friend. And he knows he's taken enough beatings in his life to handle this and he won't lay a hand on his friend.

They save the day. Bucky saves him from the water and he passes out on the shore.

He imagines red hair in his hospital room as he fades in and out but there's no voice to match it. When he comes to Trouble Man plays and he sees Sam waiting in a chair reading.

Natasha visits him once as he's being patched up and she thinks she sees his eyes open for a moment, but close again so quickly she isn't sure. She sees them cut the uniform away to get at any wounds underneath and she can see the word dark and glaring right at her. And he took a beating from his friend in just the hope that Bucky wouldn't keep going, that he would come back, and Steve was right.

She's never been that sure about anything, that good about anything, and that fear of corruption returns along with how worried she is, how much she wants to hold him close and never let go. And she's not used to the pining, to the wanting, or how much it hurts and how much she craves.

She has to let him go. It's better for everyone in the long run.

They meet in a graveyard and she has a file for him that she knows is either going to break him or save him and she hesitates on handing it over.

"You might not want to pull on that thread," she tells him and underneath she pleads a little and because she can't have him, she can't have the life she's seen other soulmates have, she gives him a kiss on the cheek and they both know its goodbye.

But she sees the light in Steve's eyes after and she wonders if he's really going to just let her go that easily. And she's surprised how much she wants him to fight for it. But she's grateful and disappointed when he doesn't.

She released all the information, all her identities and the things SHIELD/Hydra were responsible for and he looks at her like he's proud of her for making the bold choice. That it's something he would do doesn't escape her thoughts.

Still, she needs to go to ground, she knows there's people who will be looking for her, for them. It's safer to split up, safer for a lot of reasons because she can feel the tug on her soul calling for Steve and she knows she might give in if she isn't careful.

Distance is the only cure for all of it.

She thinks she can be happy with Banner. She tries, hopes, that maybe the whole relationship thing will be worthwhile, that she can feel something that isn't longing or loneliness. Banner's a good guy and he won't ask for much more than he's given and she knows it's almost too safe, but she needs safe, she wants safe.

Steve watches her flirt with him and he tries to ignore the pangs of jealousy. Natasha isn't his to love or mourn when she doesn't love him back, but he's got the first word she said to him on his chest and she's got the first word he said to her on her wrist and he knows that there's something more between them. Something she's afraid of and something over the course of time that he thinks he's ready for, he's hopeful for.

He tried to call her during his search for Bucky, tried to say something, bring up the marks and ask what she thinks they should do about it because he's been dreaming of her and he's growing increasingly disappointed when he wakes up and finds she's not there.

But he sees Natasha smile and Banner smile and he knows they deserve happiness even if it isn't with their soulmates. They've been dealt bad hands and if they can make each other smile, they deserve to explore that.

So he encourages even if it kills him a little to do so. He's survived worse. He can survive his soulmate rejecting him, right?

She watches him try to pick up Thor's hammer and she thinks that if he does it's just another notch on the reasons she shouldn't be with him. Anyone who can do that certainly couldn't want her, couldn't see all the darkness and the edges and still want to stay.

But he doesn't lift it and she's taken aback by the Asgardian creation. It doesn't think Steve is worthy? Steve?

And she wonders why she's so angry at an inanimate object even as her turn comes and she doesn't even want to give it a chance to reject her. It'll probably hurtle itself all the way through the building just to get away.

But Steve straightens, like he wants her to try, like he thinks she could lift it with ease and she just takes another sip of her drink and laughs it off like only she can.

Clint shakes his head when he finds Natasha sitting on the porch later than night.

"Banner?" He asks, "I thought…"

"It's not gonna work," she responds and her voice falters even as the memory of the Red Room flares up again.

"Well yeah, Banner's not your…"

"Not with Banner. That, I don't know but with…it's not gonna work." She remembers them cutting into her, making her kill, manipulating the memories they wanted to. She remembers them taking her brain and playing and she knows that Clint understands that feeling better than anyone else.

"Why?" Clint asks like a child that needs something explained to them.

"Because he's Steve and I'm me."

"So?"

"So…" And she finds she doesn't really have a good answer because every answer she's been giving herself feels like it's not right or it's the same damn argument and she's tired of it.

"You're a good person, Natasha. Why don't you think you deserve a soulmate?" She takes a breath and leans on Clint's shoulder and he rubs her back.

"If anything he's not good enough for you," Clint jokes and Natasha smiles.

They're standing at the edge of the world and they both know this could be it, this very well might be it.

"There's worse ways to go," she tells him and then says something about the view but he's no longer listening. She watches the horizon and he watches her and he wonders how he ever thought he couldn't trust her, how he ever thought he didn't love her.

And it hits him a lot harder than any punch he's taken. He loves her. He's grown to love her and it came slow and harsh and he can't imagine his life without her. And maybe this is what soulmates are supposed to be, she makes him better, he pushes her, maybe this is what they're supposed to be.

The last time he kissed someone he loved, it was before he died. He wonders if maybe history really does repeat itself because that's the only thing he wants to do now. But they have people to save and he finds he can't move any closer to Natasha because all he wants to do is memorize her before he goes.

She almost says it right then, almost tells him why she's afraid, why she can't tell him how she feels and it falls over her like a wave. She loves him. They're at the end and she loves him and she hates the timing, hates that she realizes it now when they're about to die.

But they don't die and even when she has the chance, she doesn't tell him, because she doesn't know if he wants to hear it now after everything.

Sokovia falls. Banner leaves and Natasha finds Steve waiting for her. And he says the things she doesn't want him to say, he tells her Banner might come back, to be hopeful and she wonders if he believes, like she believed, that she could love Banner.

She knows he's hurt even when she pretends he's not. She knows that the words on their skin mean something even when they don't really want to admit what that something is. She knows that it's not just the words that bind them. She knows even if the words didn't exist she'd love Steve Rogers.

She wonders what it would be like to kiss him now. But the wound of Banner is too fresh, the wound of Ultron, and she knows she didn't love Banner but she felt something, she wanted to feel more.

She watches Tony and Pepper and wonders what it would be like to give it a go with Steve, to really do the whole soulmate thing, and she thinks that being happy is worth more than whatever fear she has.

She replays him calling her, "Ma'am," the first time and she wonders if she had just said a different word if she could have avoided all the complicated feelings. She wonders if she had just bothered to do something about all of this earlier there wouldn't be this much doubt or confusion.

She dreams about him at night, chasing away the nightmares that she usually contends with and when she wakes to find herself alone she traces the word on her wrist and imagines his eyes and arms beside her.

They work together as a team. He trains and talks to Wanda and tries to help her through the loss of her brother. He's not sure if he's really good at this sort of thing but the kid takes a liking to him and he's glad to be someone to lean on.

He's too aware of Natasha whenever she's around and he feels his nerves on edge whenever they're alone. Wanda takes notice faster than the others and he hears Sam say something under his breath every so often, it sounds halfway between a cough and the words, "scaredy Cap."

"She is your soulmate?" Wanda asks Steve one afternoon and Steve takes a heavy breath before nodding.

"But you are not together?"

He shakes his head in response.

"You're both afraid. You shouldn't be." And he hasn't seen the words on her skin but from the way she speaks he thinks she's met whoever her soulmate is. He's surprised how she can sound wise and be so young all at the same time.

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"Because you love each other. It's the simplest thing. You start with that feeling and the rest just…you go from there." She smiles and he shakes his head.

"Yeah, I'll try that."

They spar like they used to in the early days, before SHIELD fell, before Sokovia fell. They don't pull their punches but they block and parry, recognizing each move the other's about to make before it happens.

"If this were a real fight I think we'd have to call it a tie," Steve jokes.

Natasha flips him on his ass and gives him her trademark smirk, "I don't think so."

She holds out her hand and he takes it as she helps him off the ground. "Yeah you're right. I'd win." He takes her hand and flips her over, surprising her and he feels elation at the fact that he, Captain America, the soldier, just surprised Natasha Romanoff, super spy, master assassin.

She kicks out his legs and he joins her on the ground a second later. "You should watch your hip. I hear that's a problem for you elderly types."

And the joke doesn't feel like a deflection anymore, just a prod and he finds he actually likes them. He stays on the ground beside her a lot longer than he really needs to, than he really should but the silence is comfortable and he finds that he's comfortable.

She turns to look at him and he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up as his pulse picks up speed. His eyes flash to her lips and he thinks this could be it, this could be the moment and maybe it's like Wanda said, start with one feeling and the rest falls into place.

He leans a little closer as Natasha sucks in a breath and then she sits up. He follows suit, sitting beside her in silence once again.

"You know you don't need to wear long sleeves," he tells her looking at the covered spot on her wrist where the word is. And they're still so close, he reaches a hand to take her wrist and he's gentle and careful and looks for any sign of her pulling away, but she doesn't.

He lifts the sleeve and sees the dark scrawled word amidst what looks like scarring that's faded with time.

She reaches forward and pulls his shirt aside, careful and precise as he had been. She traces a finger over the word on his chest and her breath tickles his neck. He shivers against the touch, the blood pounding in his ears and he wants this more than anything, he craves this more than anything.

Her eyes meet his and his nose brushes against hers but she pulls back again.

"What is it? Is it me? Banner?" He asks and his voice is ragged with his breath.

"No," her voice is barely above a whisper, "It's none of that."

"Then what?"

"They taught us…they told us soulmates make you weak, so they cut it out and I …I don't know…it doesn't go away. What they teach. It doesn't go away and we've got a job to do. We can't..."

"You're not weak." He rolls her sleeve down, his hands staying in place, holding her close. "I don't think you could ever be."

"You don't know…you don't know what they did. What I've done."

He brushes her hair back and looks her square in the eyes, "I know what you've done. You've saved people. You've fought evil robots, an alien army, Hydra…"

"That's another can of worms we don't need to open."

"The point is, you're a good person and whatever you've done, it doesn't change the fact that you've worked hard to make those things right. That's what matters. You didn't choose the KGB, they chose you. But you chose the Avengers. You chose yourself."

"And what about you?" She asks, pulling back further, feeling the warmth subside as his hands leave her.

"I choose to fight for what's right."

The Accords hit them all differently. Natasha and Steve are on a tentative and shaky ground, a precipice where they're not really sure where they'll fall. And now the Accords come into play and it sets it all ablaze.

She's not sure where they stand or what's going to happen now, but more than once she's found herself walking to his room and slipping under the covers beside him. It doesn't go any further than that but the sleep she finds is the best she's had in ages.

Sometimes she holds her wrist next to the word on his chest before she closes her eyes, reading the pair of words together and smiling into sleep. Sometimes she wakes up from a nightmare to see that Steve is already up and pulling her closer, telling her it'll be okay in English and in Russian.

He wakes up once or twice too, muttering to himself and saying something about a Red Skull. She's there for him in those moments and they don't talk about them the next day. They don't talk about any of it, not since the day they sparred.

But the Accords change all of it for everyone involved and Natasha isn't sure what she expects but she knows staying together is important, that the Accords are important, so she sides with Tony and tries to ignore the betrayal she sees in Steve's eyes.

She knows better than anyone what being controlled is like, what not being held accountable has done. This way at least they're still somewhat in control and the people they answer to aren't tied to one organization.

But Steve is right in his argument too but she thinks Tony is right more, so she has to choose to sign. She wants to keep working, wants to keep doing the good that she knows she's capable of, that they're all capable of. She has to sign.

She watches Steve get up and leave in a rush moments later and she can see the pain before he turns his back, sees how hard he's trying to hold himself together just to get out of the room and she knows before she hears about it later that Peggy Carter is dead.

He feels like the last one standing even when he knows Bucky is alive. He watches the casket and remembers a long time ago what it was like to hear Peggy's laugh, to hear her voice. He remembers choosing her as his soulmate back when he didn't have a word to share.

And now he has a word but he's never felt more alone. The Accords are surrounding him, threatening everything that he stands for, because it's all an agenda, it's all another lie and blame to be shifted onto someone or something else. Wanda doesn't deserve the blame he should be getting and the Accords aren't going to fix what's broken.

He feels just as broken as the world around him and so very alone.

Natasha comes to him after the service and he's on the verge of breaking down. He talks about Peggy and she listens, absolving whatever pain he's feeling. She understands the loss, knows there's not much she can do for him but be there and he's glad to see her.

"Staying together is more important than how we stay together," she tells him and he just can't sign, he just can't do it. And he wonders if she's talking about them and he wonders if he can call what they're doing being together when they really aren't.

"Then why are you here?" He asks when she doesn't try to convince him to sign, when she doesn't try to do anything, and he's surprised at how still and calm she is when he feels like his whole world is falling apart.

"I didn't want you to be alone," she tells him, "Come here." And she pulls him into a hug and he feels the world fall quiet and he wonders if this is what soulmates are meant to be, are meant to do, make everything quiet when it's falling apart. Challenge you, force you to step up and be better and make everything make sense when it doesn't.

He breathes her in and finds comfort in the most uneasy of places. Because he and Natasha haven't been easy since the beginning and a part of him thinks it's better because it's not easy. That it means more.

"You alright?" Steve asks, calling after the explosion and she's relieved to hear his voice. He's relieved to reach her.

"Yeah…I uh, I got lucky." And she knows she almost wasn't, knows that if she had been sitting a little closer she wouldn't be standing here.

"I know how much Bucky means to you, but please, stay out of it."

"Are you going to arrest me?" He asks and his voice is on edge, dark and sad. And only a few days ago they were sleeping in the same bed, chasing away nightmares, talking about nothing. It's still not a relationship, it's still nothing more than that, but it's good. It's real.

She shakes her head and knows that he can see her, knows that he's not too far from this conversation. She wants him to stay out of it, wants the Accords to work, wants all of this to work out, but she knows things aren't that simple, none of this is simple. They aren't that simple.

"Someone will," she warns and she thinks they won't just arrest him, they'll do much worse and she doesn't want to see that happen. She can't.

"Do you really want to punch your way out of this?" She asks and he can see the pleading in her eyes and he feels it like a gut shot but he knows he has no choice, there's so much more at stake.

Everyone fights and he and Bucky make their way to the Quinjet knowing full well they're leaving others behind. He hates the choices, he hates that it's come to this, and when he sees the last person who stands between him and the Quinjet, his heart sinks.

"You're not gonna stop," Natasha tells him and her voice is sad and honest and he can't bear it. He doesn't even bother to protect himself with his shield, he doesn't know if he can fight her. He knows he'd lose that fight. He's already lost that fight.

"I can't."

"I'm gonna regret this," she says and he braces for the shock but it never comes. He turns to see T'Challa fighting against shock after shock as Natasha keeps him at bay.

"Go," she orders and Steve doesn't know if he'll see her again, doesn't know what will happen, but he wishes he had more time to figure it out, more time to talk about the words, to talk about how much she means to him and she means so much more than he ever thought she could.

"I know," she tells him as he and Bucky run to the Quinjet and he hates his timing, has always hated his timing.

Bucky goes back to sleep and Steve wonders what's going to become of him and all of them in the aftermath of the Accords. They're standing in the fallout and once again they're displaced and he's alone.

He wonders where Natasha is, who she's pretending to be now and he wishes he had some way of finding her.

He steps out into the humid Wakandan afternoon and finds a red Corvette waiting for him with the diver wearing her trademark smirk. He feels the weight of everything disappear, all the confusion, the complication and the unspoken whatever it is and his stomach flips at the sight of his soulmate.

They have a lot to talk about, he has a lot to say, a lot of time to make up for because he was lost and he doesn't feel like that anymore, not with her.

Her smirk falls and she stands up straighter, waiting for him to move and he takes that step forward with ease and her eyes smile despite the events that have just shaken all of them.

He doesn't know what to say, what there is to say, so he falls back to an old fashioned idea, the true first word he ever said to her and he knows it'll mean everything.

He greets, "Ma'am."

She returns, "Hi."

And they choose each other. Choose to drive away together, ready to face the future.


End file.
